Oprah Book Club Selections, Or What Your Mom is Reading Now

Submitted by P Pogo on Tue, 09/27/2005 - 05:08
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  • Anna Karenina/Leo Tolstoy (2004)
  • As I Lay Dying/William Faulkner (2005)
  • Back Roads/Tawni O'Dell (2000)
  • The Best Way to Play/Bill Cosby (1997)
  • Black and Blue/Anna Quindlen (1998)
  • The Bluest Eye/Toni Morrison (2000)
  • The Book of RuthJane Hamilton (1996)
  • Breath, Eyes, Memory/Edwidge Danticat (1998)
  • Cane River/Lalita Tademy (2001)
  • The Corrections/Jonathan Franzen (2001) [Later withdrawn from club.]
  • Cry, The Beloved Country/Alan Paton (2003)
  • Daughter of FortuneIsabel Allende (2000)
  • The Deep End of the Ocean/Jacquelyn Mitchard (1996)
  • Drowning Ruth/Christina Schwarz (2000)
  • East of Eden/John Steinbeck (2003)
  • Ellen Foster/Kaye Gibbons (1997)
  • Fall on Your Knees/Ann-Marie MacDonald (2002)
  • A Fine Balance/Rohinton Mistry (2001)
  • Gap Creek/Robert Morgan (2000)
  • The Good Earth/Pearl S. Buck (2004)
  • The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter/Carson McCullers (2004)
  • The Heart of a Woman/Maya Angelou (1997)
  • Here on Earth/Alice Hoffman (1998)
  • House of Sand and Fog/Andre Dubus III (2000)
  • I Know This Much Is True/Wally Lamb (1998)
  • Icy Sparks/Gwyn Hyman Rubio (2001)
  • Jewel/Bret Lott (1999)
  • A Lesson Before Dying/Ernest J. Gaines (1997)
  • A Light in August/William Faulkner (2005)
  • A Map of the World/Jane Hamilton (1999)
  • The Meanest Thing To Say/Bill Cosby (1997)
  • The Measure of a Man/Sidney Poitier (2007)
  • Midwives/Chris Bohjalian (1998)
  • A Million Little Pieces/James Frey (2005) [Whoops!]
  • Mother of Pearl/Melinda Haynes (1999)
  • Night/Elie Wiesel (2006)
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude/Gabriel García Márquez (2004)
  • Open House/Elizabeth Berg (2000)
  • Paradise/Toni Morrison (1998)
  • The Pilot's Wife/Anita Shreve (1999)
  • The Poisonwood Bible/Barbara Kingsolver (2000)
  • The Rapture of Canaan/Sheri Reynolds (1997)
  • The Reader/Bernhard Schlink (1999)
  • River, Cross My Heart/Breena Clarke (1999)
  • The Road/Cormac McCarthy (2007)
  • She's Come Undone/Wally Lamb (1997)
  • Song of SolomonToni Morrison (1996)
  • The Sound and the FuryWilliam Faulkner (2005)
  • Songs In Ordinary TimeMary McGarry Morris (1997)
  • Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail/Malika Oufkir (2001)
  • Stones from the River/Ursula Hegi (1997)
  • Sula/Toni Morrison (2002)
  • Tara Road/Maeve Binchy (1999)
  • The Treasure Hunt/Bill Cosby (1997)
  • Vinegar Hill/A. Manette Ansay (1999)
  • A Virtuous Woman/Kaye Gibbons (1997)
  • We Were the Mulvaneys/Joyce Carol Oates (2001)
  • What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day/Pearl Cleage (1998)
  • Where the Heart Is/Billie Letts (1998)
  • While I Was Gone/Sue Miller (2000)
  • White Oleander/Janet Fitch (1999)
Author Comments: 

All kidding aside, Oprah's Book Club (combined with the McDonalds-like spread of Borders and B&N, as well as the phenomenon that is Amazon) has really turned your average American TV viewer back to the written word.

I really have no idea why I chose to list these, other than it's something I chose to research. Maybe I just wanted to shove it down Jonathan Franzen's throat again. After all, without Oprah, where would unknowns like Faulkner be?

bravereader07/21/2009

I'm guessing that Faulkner is or is not an unknown, depending on your age and the section of B&N you frequent. I've known of Faulkner since high school because I was introduced to him at that time. He won the Pulitzer in 1955 - hardly unknown.

P Pogo07/21/2009

Thanks for the comment, but my original Faulkner crack was kind of a joke. A poor joke, but a joke all the same.

Would it be funnier if I used Steinbeck as the example?